If You Win the Housing Lottery Can You Apply Again
How I Scored a Luxury one-Bedroom NYC Flat for $810 a Month
I know firsthand about the mythical "affordable housing" bandied about by almost every cash-strapped New Yorker. Six years afterward applying with my partner, I won an apartment in the NYC Affordable Housing Lottery—a unicorn most folks really know little almost.
New York City and the NYC Housing Development Corporation (HDC) offer several types of affordable housing. The most mutual is the 80/xx Housing Program for low-income residents, which gives a tax-break to multi-family rental building developers if they ready bated at least xx per centum of new units for low-income households. Amid other programs, some buildings take function in a mixed-income (50/xxx/20) plan or a Mix and Match housing program—both essentially separate units between low-income households and marketplace-rate or middle-income tenants (usually upward to 130 percent of the area median income, also known as AMI). For 2019, the AMI in New York Urban center is $74,700 for a single person and $85,400 for a household of ii. For each of these affordable units, y'all gain eligibility past coming together the HDC guidelines and winning the housing lottery.
My journey to affordable housing began at Housing Connect—the NYC Housing Development Corporation (HDC)'s portal to the housing lotteries. My partner and I filled out an online business relationship with our basic household and financial information online and updated it over the years whenever our income or household composition changed. The site lists available properties and income requirements for yous to look at. Both my partner and I were freelancers with minimal income and we qualified as a household making l percent of the AMI at the fourth dimension. If we were eligible (and interested) for a edifice, nosotros would but hit "apply" on Housing Connect (If you're interested in getting into the contumely tacks of the procedure, HDC provides an excellent guide to affordable housing that explains the process step-by-step). When y'all apply for a lottery, your application gets put in a pile with all the others (the NYC housing department estimates between 1,000 to forty,000 applications come up in for each holding), and the HDC chooses "winners" at random. You're given a log number (the number assigned to each application that responds to the order in which the applications were received) to hold onto equally well.
Later applying for several housing lotteries, we never heard anything dorsum. Only nearly six years into trying, we were chosen in for an interview at a new luxury high-rising building on the Upper Due west Side months after applying for that edifice.
We were told to bring copies of our birth certificates, tax returns, bank statements, utility bills, pay stubs, a letter from our landlord considering he never gave us rent receipts, and a bunch of other financial documents dating back iii years to the interview. (This is a handy checklist with resources that lists the documentation you'll need to present at an affordable housing interview.)
On the solar day of the interview, we sat with an interviewer for over an hour while she went through our documents, added up numbers on her computer, and asked the occasional question while we waited nervously. Finally, she told us we were eligible for a 1-bedroom apartment.
But the process didn't stop at that place. All of our documents were checked for veracity and information technology took them three months to hear from them again, when they asked for additional documentation and told us we were "certified", pregnant nosotros were invited to view an apartment in the building. We went to an orientation with 3 other households at the new building and were shown–and offered–a one-sleeping room unit of measurement for $810 a calendar month. We were given 24 hours to decide whether nosotros wanted the place. Our respond was obviously yep!
But a whirlwind process still followed. We were asked to sign a lease the next day and bring coin orders for start calendar month's rent and security deposit—yes a money guild, the payment method that all anti-scam advice usually warns confronting (but in this instance it was fine). This was truthful even though we were also paying $1,400 hire on our existing apartment and would be living there for some other month.
This is where the affordable-ness of the affordable housing lottery came into question for the states. There were many additional unforeseen expenses during the lease-up process. Bated from paying rent on two apartments for one month, we had to buy iii big area rugs as per the new edifice's rules, 80 percent of the floor infinite had to be covered. This ended upwardly costing united states of america close to a thousand dollars, and these were rugs that were on sale. There was no overhead lighting in our bedroom, so nosotros had to spend another couple of hundred dollars on lighting. Some folks have told me this is normal in Manhattan, but it was surprising for usa after living in Brooklyn for 12-plus years where this was never an issue. (Luckily, my parents were able to requite united states of america money for these unforeseen expenses, but what happens to folks without additional resource who can't afford to comply?)
In one case we moved in, things got easier. Afterwards y'all win the lottery, your apartment is like whatsoever other rent-stabilized unit in New York Metropolis. We pay whatever increment the NYC Rent Guidelines Board has approved when we renew our lease, and we cannot lose the apartment just because nosotros have since secured office-fourth dimension twenty-four hours jobs and earn more than when nosotros started renting. However, we do have to exist recertified every twelvemonth, which involves once more handing over all our financials (for the previous yr) as well as a physical inspection of our flat to satisfy various regulations of the different programs.
And to respond the virtually burning question we receive: Yes, nosotros are allowed to apply the amenities (lounge, gym, pool, rooftop deck) if we pay the same membership fee ($750 annually for a household of 2 or more, less for a unmarried person) similar every other tenant.
While it might accept you years to win, you tin start the affordable housing process at present by clicking the links above. Good luck!
Have a home-finance story you'd like to share? Whether it's paying off your mortgage early, finding a super cheap NYC apartment, or even smart rent payment strategy, we'd honey to hear it! E-mail repitches@apartmenttherapy.com with your story.
More keen Real Manor reads:
simmonsharanded99.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/nyc-housing-lottery-260699
0 Response to "If You Win the Housing Lottery Can You Apply Again"
Enviar um comentário